What is Sports Betting Hedging?

Hedging a sports bet means to have wagers on both sides of a particular outcome to assure yourself at least some profit. It’s a great skill that bettors can hone to increase their bankrolls as profits (albeit typically smaller) will be had no matter the outcome. There are many ways a bettor can go about hedging a wager and it all depends on where exactly that initial bet that was placed sits. Read more and improve your skills.

How to Hedge Your Bets

Hedging your bets can be done in a variety of ways depending on the type of wager you initially placed at your sportsbook. For example, if you had placed a futures wager at the beginning of the 2016 NFL season on the Atlanta Falcons to win Super Bowl 51 which was around 75-1, there is no doubt that once they made the big game vs.

New England that you’d want to have quite a bit of money on New England then. That initial $100 wager on Atlanta pays $7,500, and hedging say, $1000 on New England would guarantee a profit. If the Patriots win you’d get $1000 or so and lose the $100 on Atlanta for a profit of $900, while if the Falcons had won you’d be up $6,500 ($7500-$1000 on Patriots). No matter how the game played out you’d be profiting and that’s the ideal situation for bettors.

It does’t just have to be future wagers that can be hedged as the increased popularity of in-play betting enables plenty of hedging opportunities known as “middles” as well.

If you have a bet on ‘under’ 220 in a NBA game and the two teams are playing a very low-scoring 1st half, you’ll find in-play totals in the high 190′s or so. Taking an ‘over’ in that case would guarantee a break even at worst, and with a 20+ point gap between the two wagers there is a solid chance you would ‘middle’ the numbers, winning both bets should it land above your 190′s number but still below 220.

What Are The Benefits Of Hedge Sports Betting

The benefits of hedging a sports bet is that there is no sweating the result at all, you know by the end of the game you’ll be up some money. There is no stress and if you do it right – like with something like ‘middles’ – chances for big paydays occur. With typical hedge bets, the knock is that your winning margins are much smaller as you will be investing some of those future profits in the losing side. Yet, adding to your bankroll in any fashion is always a good thing in this industry.